With their well-earned reputation for great game making, many of us wait anxiously for any new Blizzard launch. Starcraft II certainly got its share of associated pre-launch hype and anticipation. So it was with some excitement that I cracked open the case and fired up my copy.
Right away its obvious that the production values on SC2 are top notch. The UI is clean, the graphics are sharp, and every single campaign level smoothly designed with an abundance of integrated cutscenes, voice overlay, and high quality atmospheric elements. This level of detail, carefully designed missions with storyline relevance, and attention to tying elements together clearly make SC2 stand out as a well made game.
So let me step back for a moment and cover the basics a bit.
Starcraft II is a standard RTS, very much in the same model as the original Starcraft. There are three races to choose from - Terrans (human), Protoss (magic feeling aliens), and Zerg (swarming bug aliens). Gameplay involves harvesting minerals and vespane to gain resources, and to train units, buildings, and upgrades. Stronger units unlock with the progressive creation of additional buildings so you always have to make a tradeoff on building specific units to fight with now or continuing to push towards better late game units which might not be ready in time to save your bacon when you need them.
Terrans are the race you end up playing for almost the entire campaign (a departure from the original where they let you play all three races during campaign mode). They've got inexpensive ranged units, strong vehicles, healers, and a long-distance siege tank for smashing fortifications from a safe distance. Protoss (space elves, just admit it and move on) are shield-based with personal shields that recover naturally over time if not killed. They tend to be higher investment per unit but higher per unit output as well. They have some heavy high end units that give good returns for a lot of investment, including a carrier that releases a storm of independent fighters to scour the area around them. Finally, the insectlike Zerg are the rush race, with rapid deployment and the ability to spawn wave after wave of small fast damage-dealing units. Zerg have their own arsenal of tricks as well such as underground movement and infestation, heal naturally, and gain movement bonus when running across their terraformed terrain.
As I mentioned earlier, campaign mode is really well done. Between missions you can enjoy some well crafted story bits, upgrade individual units in the armory, and select tech advances in the lab which allow you to choose between one of two upgrades that will carry forward for the rest of the campaign. No single upgrade is game-breaking, but it gives a nice feeling of variety as you modify units to suit your own playstyle a bit more.
The story progresses forward in a fairly linear path, but you can switch up the order of missions a bit to unlock certain units or upgrades first depending on your preference. You get to do one brief set of missions as the Protoss, but for the most part you're Terran all the way through, so I apologize on Blizzard's behalf to all you Zerg lovers out there. Maybe they'll do a Zerg campaign follow-up later.
Multiplayer battles feel like the old Starcraft multiplayer, with tradeoffs between rushing, teching, and defense. Unfortunately, I actually find it a little too old-style faithful in this respect, as its missing a lot of the RTS evolution that you have probably come to expect in an RTS game. Terrain really isn't all that important, height yields very little advantage, there's no suppression, and battle is much more about straight numbers and rock/paper/scissors tradeoffs than about position and timing. I'm sure the Starcraft junkies are going to yell at me for saying it, and explain how if you memorize all the unit stats you can pick the perfect unit counter for your opponent's build, but truthfully I find multiplayer gameplay to be an awful lot about build fast, build plenty, and run them over with a giant blob. Really good Starcraft players may experience it differently, but I think most players are going to end up sharing my impression of it - speed and quantity is what wins games. That's ok, but not amazing as a tactical experience.
I should perhaps mention the achievement system, because... its got one. But its not memorable in any way, serving mostly as a stamp collection and unlocking a couple different profile images. I would have liked to see them use it for something more - unlocks, bonus content, etc... and was disappointed that they didn't bother.
Overall, I found Starcraft II to be enjoyable, but not impossible to put down. It has solid gameplay and a good campaign to play through. Even shooting for all the campaign achievements though, its not going to take you all that long (a couple days at most perhaps while still remembering to eat and bathe occasionally). It is a good game, and worth a play through, but it doesn't make me feel compelled to keep picking it up over and over for more.
Starcraft II
Rating: 8.9
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